Leaks

[RedRooster]

How much leak is really acceptable? Mine are usually under 25 Ml but the Res Med report says need to adjust mask. Most leaks appear to be when I turn over & are short in duration. Sleepyhead reports show around 5-6% LL.

[Okie bipap]

If Sleepyhead shows excess leaks 5 to 6 percent of the night, I wouldn't worry about it unless they disturb your sleep. The machine can probably handle leaks up to around 35 lpm, but the large leak flag is set for 24 lpm. I changed our Sleepyhead program to have the large leak flag set to 34 lpm.

[RedRooster]

Thanks Okie....surprised that you are the only reply.

[palerider]

Thanks Okie....surprised that you are the only reply.

Leaks over 24lpm are Resmed's "we're starting to be uncomfortable with this, and at some point we won't be able to differentiate the type of apnea' level. It's a conservative level.

if they're not bothering you, and not much above 24lpm, then ... meh..

In other words, basically what Okie said.

[Pugsy]

I don't even bother looking very closely at the leak graphs unless I spend more than 10% of the night in large leak territory as long as I sleep through any leaks.
And then when I do look closely I check to see just how deep into large leak territory I went and how long was I deep. Unless I spend quite a bit of time above 35 L/min I don't look any further. The machine is fairly accurate up to at least 35 L/min leak and I think sometimes even further than that. If it has problems you will see a lot of unknown apnea flags meaning something happened but due to the leak it couldn't put a name to whatever happened.

So I look at the big picture and not just one number and then I decide just what I might want to do about it...if anything. And 99% of the time it's "do nothing" and the other time it usually means I need to either shrink my headgear or get new headgear. My big leaks are mask movement leaks usually from stretched out headgear.

All this is assuming the leaks aren't disturbing my sleep. Any leak that wakes a person up though...needs to be worked on no matter how big or small because anything that wakes us up is unwanted.

[palerider]

Thanks Okie....surprised that you are the only reply.

Sometimes, there's only one answer, because it's the right answer.